At two years old, this didn't seem unreasonable to me. It just seemed, at the time, like another thing that separated children from adults: Children had to eat all their vegetables. Adults did not. Children could ride the merry-go-round in the park. Adults could not. Children could see the grey things. Adults could not.
And even though I was only two years old, I understood that the little grey thing at the top of the stairs was not something to be discussed. Not with anybody. Not ever.
And I never did. I never told anyone about my first ghost, nor did I ever discuss with anyone the hundreds of other ghosts I encountered over the course of the next few years. What was there to discuss, really? I saw them. They spoke to me. For the most part, I didn't understand what they were saying, what they wanted, and they usually went away. End of story.
It probably would have gone on like that indefinitely if my father hadn't suddenly up and died.
Really. Just like that. One minute he was there, cooking and making jokes in the kitchen like he'd always done, and the next day he was gone.
And, people kept assuring me all through the week following his death – which I spent on the stoop in front of our building, waiting for my dad to come home – he was never coming back.
I, of course, didn't believe their assurances. Why should I? My dad, not coming back? Were they nuts? Sure, he might have been dead. I got that part. But he was definitely coming back. Who was going to help me with my math homework? Who was going to wake up early with me on Saturday mornings, and make Belgian waffles and watch cartoons? Who was going to teach me to drive, like he'd promised, when I turned sixteen? My dad might have been dead, but I was definitely going to see him again. I saw lots of dead people on a daily basis. Why shouldn't I see my dad?
It turned out I was right. Oh, my dad was dead. No doubt about that. He'd died of a massive coronary. My mom had his body cremated, and she put his ashes in an antique German beer tankard. You know, that kind with the lid. My dad had always really liked beer. She put the tankard on a shelf, high up, where the cat couldn't knock it over, and sometimes, when she didn't think I was around, I caught her talking to it.
This made me feel really sad. I mean, I guess I couldn't blame her, really. If I didn't know any better, I'd probably have talked to that tankard, too.
But that, you see, was what all those people on my block had been wrong about. My dad was dead, yeah. But I did see him again.
In fact, I probably see him more now than I did when he was alive. When he was alive, he had to go to work most days. Now that he's dead, he doesn't have all that much to do. So I see him a lot. Almost too much, in fact. His favorite thing to do is suddenly materialize when I least expect it. It's kind of annoying.
My dad was the one who finally explained it to me. So I guess, in a way, it's a good thing he did die, since I might never have known, otherwise.
Actually, that isn't true. There was a tarot card reader who said something about it once. It was at a school carnival. I only went because Gina didn't want to go alone. I pretty much thought it was a crock, but I went along because that's what best friends do for one another. The woman – Madame Zara, Psychic Medium – read Gina's cards, telling her exactly what she wanted to hear: Oh, you're going to be very successful, you'll be a brain surgeon, you'll marry at thirty, and have three kids, blah, blah, blah. When she was done, I got up to go, but Gina insisted Madame Zara do a reading for me, too.
You can guess what happened. Madame Zara read the cards once, looked confused, and shuffled them up and read them again. Then she looked at me.
"You," she said, "talk to the dead."
This excited Gina. She went, "Oh my God! Oh my God! Really? Suze, did you hear that? You can talk to the dead! You're a psychic medium, too!"
"Not a medium," Madame Zara said. "A mediator."
Gina looked crushed. "A what? What's that?"
But I knew. I'd never known what it was called, but I knew what it was. My dad hadn't put it quite that way when he'd explained things, but I got the gist of it, anyway: I am pretty much the contact person for just about anybody who croaks leaving things ... well, untidy. Then, if I can, I clean up the mess.
That's the only way I can think to explain it. I don't know how I got so lucky – I mean, I am normal in every other respect. Well, almost, anyway. I just have this unfortunate ability to communicate with the dead.
Not any dead, either. Only the unhappy dead.
So you can see that my life has really been just a bowl of cherries these past sixteen years.
Imagine, being haunted – literally haunted – by the dead, every single minute of every single day of your life. It is not pleasant. You go down to the deli to get a soda – oops, dead guy on the corner. Somebody shot him. And if you could just make sure the cops get the guy who did it, he can finally rest in peace.
And all you wanted was a soda.
Or you go to the library to check out a book — oops, the ghost of some librarian comes up to you and wants you to tell her nephew how mad she is about what he did with her cats after she kicked the bucket.
And those are just the folks who know why they're still sticking around. Half of them don't have any idea why they haven't slipped off into the afterlife like they're supposed to.
Which is irritating because, of course, I'm the schmuck who's supposed to help them get there.
I'm the mediator.
I tell you, it is not a fate I would wish on anybody.
There isn't a whole lot of payoff in the mediation field. It isn't like anyone's ever offered me a salary, or anything. Not even hourly compensation. Just the occasional warm fuzzies you get when you do a good turn for somebody. Like telling some girl who didn't get to say good-bye to her grandfather before he passed away that he really loves her, and he forgives her for that time she trashed his El Dorado. That kind of thing can warm the heart, it really can.
But for the most part, it's cold pricklies all the way. Besides the hassle – constantly being pestered by folks nobody but you can see – there's the fact that a lot of ghosts are really rude. I mean it. They are royal pains to deal with. These are generally the ones who actually want to hang around in this world instead of taking off for the next one. They probably know that based on their behavior in their most recent life, they aren't in for much of a treat in the one they've got coming up. So they just stay here and bug people, slamming doors, knocking over things, making cold spots, groaning. You know what I mean. Your basic poltergeists.
Sometimes, though, they can get rough. I mean, they try to hurt people. On purpose. That's when I usually get mad. That's when I usually feel compelled to kick a little ghost butt.
Which was what my mom meant when she said, "Oh, Suze. Not again." When I kick ghost butt, things have a tendency to get a little ... messy.
Not that I had any intention of messing up my new room. Which is why I turned my back on the ghost sitting on my window seat and said, "Never mind, Mom. Everything's fine. The room is great. Thanks so much."
I could tell she didn't believe me. It's hard to fake out my mom. I know she suspects there's something up with me. She just can't figure out what it is. Which is probably a good thing because it would shake up the world as she knows it in too major a way. I mean, she's a television news reporter. She only believes what she can see. And she can't see ghosts.
I can't tell you how much I wish I could be like her.
"Well," she said. "Well, I'm glad you like it. I was sort of worried. I mean, I know how you get about ... well, old places."
Old places are the worst for me because the older a building is, the more chance there is that someone has died in it, and that he or she is still hanging around there looking for justice or waiting to deliver some final message to someone. Let me tell you, this led to some pretty interesting results back when my mom and I used to go apartment hunting in the city. We would walk into these seemingly perfect apartments, and I'd be like, "Nuh-uh. No way," for no reason that I could actually explain. It's really a wonder my mom never just packed me off to boarding school.